


Two Truths and Two Lies

by J_deandra_j



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Hamburg Beatles, Homophobic Language, M/M, Magical Mystery Tour, Not A Happy Ending, Not reading the atmosphere, Oral Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Sick Paul McCartney, it's only love and that is all, typical angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:21:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23193121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_deandra_j/pseuds/J_deandra_j
Summary: Pt 1 Spring 1965: John writes "It's Only Love." Paul helps.  My oh my.Pt 2 Spring 1961: Paul is the Problem-solver.Pt 3 Summer 1966: A rainout in Cincinnati; John and Paul need each other.Pt 4 Fall 1967: Lennon and McCartney are a team again.  Right?
Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 66
Kudos: 115





	1. 1965: It's Only Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is four somewhat interrelated snippets of John/Paul fic, set in different eras (1961, 1965, 1966, 1967), based off interesting quotes I've found. They are not necessarily in chronological order and I flip POVs. Mostly it's pining but with some sexy stuff in 1967.

In 1969, John said, “I was always ashamed of that because of the abominable lyrics.” In 1972, he told Hit Parader magazine, “That’s the one song I really hate of mine. Terrible lyric!” In a Playboy magazine interview in 1980, he said, “I always thought it was a lousy song. The lyrics are abysmal. I always hated it!”  
___________________

Sunlight had a quality, a character, a personality— a chatty one, and no, that wasn’t the drugs talking. It was the sun, see? It would tell you what time of day it was, what time of year it was. What the weather was like outside.  
  
John was barely awake and not prepared to listen to it all just yet. He cracked one eyelid, peering in on the conversation.  
  
The quality and angle of the brightness told him it was a sunny spring day in Surrey. Likely past morning, oops. He was sprawled alone atop the covers yet warm, even cozier at his feet and hip where cats were napping on him. He could hear birds but not Cyn banging around anywhere, nor Julian’s high querulousness, which meant they were out. Still, some vibration in the atmosphere told him he wasn’t alone. Was Paul supposed to come by—was that today?  
  
Morning wood grabbed John’s attention and he flop-rolled out of bed—the cats would forgive him—and stumbled into the loo for a piss. He relieved his bladder, smothering yawns against the back of his hand, then went about discovering the whereabouts of his glasses, always a laugh riot. Then he yawned all the way down the stairs and through an empty, blessedly silent house, and on into the kitchen in search of tea.  
  
Aha! His _eye spied_ a sign of human _life_ : the kettle was steaming on the stove, spout open to curb its whistle (and thus not _disturb_ ). A half-empty cup, not his, sat on the counter. As John dug a mug out of the cupboard and clawed a teabag from the canister, his eye caught a movement outside: Paul, hand up to shield his gaze from the sun, bending down and peering into the pool.  
  
How _unwise_ , those _goodbyes_ , the sun in your _eyes_?”  
  
John brewed his tea and cupped the mug in his hands, warmth spreading to his fingers and fluttering in his belly and toes, and watched Paul stand and reach for the sky, stretching out the kinks, thrusting his arse into prominence. One might think he had an audience! But John knew himself invisible behind the filmy kitchen curtains.   
  
He lit a smoke and felt a rush at the first inhale, a giddiness like reactivation of last night’s record-breaking high. He had a vague memory of Cyn, opening the window of the living room and batting her hands at the smoke like she needed to see him through it. She saw him every day, for Christ’s sake.  
  
Outside, Paul loped over to a deck chair and lifted a guitar out of it, then flopped himself down in its place. He glanced around, alert like a squirrel that senses a presence: bright-eyed, curious, fidgety, fingers dying to create music but being much too polite to do so quite yet. Maybe John might’ve liked to’ve been serenaded from his bed _.  
  
_Last _night_ is the _night I_ will remember you _by_. I get _high_ when _I_ see you walk _by_ , _my_ oh _my_.  
  
Aye aye aye. He hadn’t seen Paul last night, and only briefly the previous evening. A selection of the Weybridge The Beatles contingent had been out at the clubs, him and Cynthia and Ritchie and Mo, joining the ranks of the painfully hip for a few hours—at least, until Cynthia had begged to get home to Julian. They’d been leaving the Ad Lib and Paul had nearly breezed right past them. _Right, right, shall I come by on Monday? Ciao, lads_ , and that was it, Paul gone, not one but two birds in tow and his flame-haired flame nowhere to be seen. Tsk tsk.   
  
John would sell this pile and move back to town and find a living life again. He would.  
  
Ciggie in one hand and tea in the other, John kicked open the patio door and braved the outside.  
  
“Pardon, Constable?” John held his tea mug up to his ear and spoke in his best Surrey mum. “Why, yes, the strange man on my property is carrying a guitar. What kind? It appears to be an Epiphone. A Texan, perhaps.”  
  
“Oh mister. Don’t rat me out to the coppers. They got it in for me.” Paul said, without even looking up, in a flat New York accent. Like John’s appearance had granted some kind of permission, he began strumming a few twinkling chords.  
  
“Never mind, Constable.” John hung up his mugphone and took a scalding sip. Paul had no right to be that attractive with mussed hair and stubble on his chin. “What time was your appointment?”  
  
Paul halted playing and looked up at that. A crease appeared between his eyebrows. “Appointment?”  
  
His lips looked swollen, too. John hooked another deck chair around one toe and dragged it closer, then sank into it and shut his eyes to keep Paul, ratty old Paul whom he’d known for a dog’s age, from being exciting. Except he fucking smelled good, too. Like the red soap that had Jim McCartney had kept in his bathtub. John sighed. Why should he feel this way? Being himself was a drag sometimes, a real fucking chore.  
  
“I have to make appointments for my friends to see me these days, you know.”  
  
John felt rather than saw Paul’s eye-roll. “Don’t be a nit. Oh! I saw Cyn when I was strolling in. She asked me to tell you that she’s taking Jules shopping with her mum.”  
  
“How nice for her.”  
  
“You’re in a mood, aren’t you.” There was silence for a few moments, and then, “Did you sleep in those clothes? You’re covered in cat hair, you know.”  
  
John blindly brushed down his t-shirt and shorts. He honestly couldn’t remember if they even matched.   
  
“What can I say? I was swimming all night in a bed full—”  
  
“—of pussy,” he and Paul said at the same time. They both snorted at their mutual cleverness.  
  
It’s not _right_ that you and _I_ should _fight_. **  
**  
John decided it was safe to look. No, his clothes didn’t match at all. And sunlight was a vicious gossip, exposing the reddened corners of Paul’s eyes. John glanced down and noticed that he needed to ash his cigarette. He flicked the dangling ash onto the pool deck and, too late, saw the ashtray Paul was nudging his way with his foot.   
  
“Are those blue Chukka boots?”  
  
“Yeah.” Paul lifted his foot and examined it, showing John the brand-new, barely scuffed sole. “Theeshe are my blue shuede boots, boy.”  
  
“Where’d you get ‘em? I want some.”  
  
Paul stuck his nose in the air. “Ahh! But they won’t go with pyjamas.”  
  
“Fuck off. I can’t help being a fag for fashion.” And other things. John would ask to try them on, but they’d be a size and a half too big. Nothing like fooling the birds, was there? Not that Paul didn’t have other charms. Other methods. The chicks had always been all over him no matter what he kept stuffed under his clobber.  
  
The boys, too; Ritch didn’t have the monopoly on those screamers. John peeked at Paul’s tired eyes and swollen lips and remembered a party in London they’d gone to with Eppy, him and Paul, not long after they’d recorded their first album.  
  
Brian had requested they both dress in their new navy-blue suits and took them to a fancy Mayfair do held by some of his “associates.” It was nothing like a Liverpool sailor’s wedding or a Hamburg chicky-bar bender; it was high-class toffee nonsense, packed with bent playwrights and musical directors and gangsters.  
  
Brian had brought John for his own satisfaction and Paul to make everyone else seethe with Mister Greenie’s envy. He liked being cock of the walk, did Brian.  
  
“There won’t be many ladies in attendance,” Brian had told them in the car. “But I would like us all to make a good impression. Between the three of us tonight, we could have the entertainment industry taking us very seriously. I know you’ll do well, Paul, with your, er, engaging manners.”  
  
“What about me, Eppy?” John asked, with pursed, kissable lips and narrowed eyes.  
  
Brian blushed, so violently it was visible even in the darkness of the car. “Oh. Yes. Well, John, please try to be as polite as possible.”  
  
“Ha!” John crowed, and felt Paul’s fingers, squeezing his knee where Brian couldn’t see. It was the _it’s-only-one-evening-you’ll-survive_ signal.  
  
And John was very well behaved! He drank only enough to stay relaxed, and stuck close to Paul and his manners and smiled sunnily at every swishing artiste charmed by either or both, and never said, not once, “we had a Hamburg whore teach him not to choke on cock, you know,” or even, “he’ll smile at you while he fucks your sisters blind.” And success!—the blokes were either terrified of John or found him seriously, dangerously attractive. Brian had seemed pleased, anyway, and John felt very sly.  
  
It turned out Brian had his number and no joke. “It must be difficult for you, John,” he said kindly into John’s ear, later, low and close where Paul couldn’t hear. “I’ve never been the jealous sort.”  
  
That had been quite an oucher. John still had some secrets, though. Even from Paul: obviously Paul knew that John wasn’t as un-faggy as he might’ve wished to be, but he was certainly clueless as to the extent of it.   
  
_You’ll break your heart on that one_ , Brian told him once, in Spain.  
  
The _clomp_ of Paul’s boot hitting concrete startled John from his self-pity. Oblivious to it as ever, Paul began to strum, a few fast and aimless-seeming jangles.   
  
Just to be a bastard, John sang, “There were four of us, me, your big feet and you…”  
  
“It’s all jealousy, you know,” Paul said with a wave, closer to the truth than he kenned.   
  
“George will deffo be green when he sees them,” John tossed out there.  
  
Paul became very still. One might even say he glared.   
  
“Is he coming?” he asked in a flat voice.  
  
John felt a little lightheaded. If professional jealousy was all he’d get, he’d take it. “Dunno. He’s here all the time, you know. He has songs. They’re all crap.”  
  
“Oh.” Paul’s expression smoothed to a careful blandness. He must practice wearing that concrete facade in his bathroom mirror: putting it on, taking it off. Nobody gets through this, son. “Well, then, we’d better get cracking on Side Two. You say you have something?”  
  
Ah, yes, Side Two: the reason they were gathered here today. John thought for few moments before answering, because all he had was sappy bullshit he couldn’t help but be fond of. But then, Paul adored sappy bullshit.  
  
“Yeah,” he said at last, and reached out a gimme for Paul’s guitar.   
  
Paul gripped it by the neck and passed it over. John gave it a few swipes with callused fingers, testing the tension and orienting himself to the upside-down strings, then began to play the tune he’d been faffing over the last few days. He even knew it well enough that he didn’t need his scribbled lyrics, which were lost somewhere in the house anyway. A bar of C, a bar of A. _Down, down up, down up, down up down down up_. “I get high when I see you walk by, hmm hmm hmm. When you sigh hmm hmm insides just fly. Hmm hmm hmm. Why am I so shy when I’m beside you. It’s only love, and that is all. Why should I feel the way I do?” B, C, G, A. Textbook stuff, and John hated to think it sounded nice, but it sounded nice. Even though his voice was hoarse and nasally from an excess of smoke and too much sleeping in too much pussy.  
  
Paul listened with his eyes closed, head tilted like a dog, ear gathering the tune from beneath his shaggy hair. John had most of it but not all; _it’s not right that you and I should fight, hmm hmm hmm_ , and on, hurrying through the “it’s so hard loving you, loving youuuuuu okay that’s it, can-it-be-made-something-other-than awful?”  
  
Paul’s cheeks were tinged with pink, from either an excess of excesses, or maybe just the sun. “What? Of course, of course. It’s very nice. The augmented G in the first verse is a good one.”  
  
“It’s a trademark, y’know. A spec-zee-ality of zee house. Like a manufactured love song. Good enough for a couple minutes of Side Two, anyway.”  
  
“No! No, it’s good. It fits the theme. ‘Help!’ It’s so hard loving you, you know.”  
  
In another life, from a less clueless soul, that might’ve been a confession. It was for John. Was he the only one who ever felt obvious?  
  
“I suppose,” John said aloud. “Something to sell to the girls. And the sappier boys.”  
  
“And we’ve got an ‘I’ thing going, too. Here.” Paul made a grabby motion for his Epiphone and John passed it back. And fuck if Paul didn’t just close his eyes and casually strum John’s song back at him, the song he’d heard once, C, A, all the downs and ups, like the celestial rising star he was. Jesus Christ, John’d trained the boy up from toddlerhood and Paul still scared him now and then.   
  
(Actually he frightened John on a soul-deep level, but John wasn’t going to think about that, not _to_ -day.)  
  
“See you walk by. My, oh my?” Paul sang.  
  
Paul’s lashes were sunning themselves on his puffy cheeks. Obviously he’d been drinking last night. There was a red mark below his ear. Who had last night’s lucky winner been? Paul likely wouldn’t even remember. He was happy enough with a drunken unemotional shag, as John very well knew.  
  
It took a couple of moments of silence for John to realize that (1) he’d been caught staring, and (2) Paul was waiting for some kind of reaction.  
  
“What?”  
  
“My, oh my?” Paul quirked an eyebrow at him. He played a bar of G. “My, oh my?”  
  
John dug out a smoke to hide the fact that he liked it, and that he cared that he’d liked it. “Oh. Yeah. That’ll do. Gotta light?”  
  
“Do you have it written down somewhere?”  
  
“Sorry, my hands were full and I had to carry me notebook up me arse and now it’s too fouled to be used! Do you have a light?”  
  
“Pffft.” Paul dug in his tight jeans for a lighter and passed it over, then dug around in another pocket until he found a scrap of paper and the nub of a pencil. John had used to carry songwriting implements around, too, until he’d realized that Paul was always there to have those things for him.   
  
That was yes-ter-day. But Paul wasn’t always going to be there, was he? To-mor-row? John would. Right here in Surrey, with his dear family and money from shit songs. While Paul would spiral away like a rogue comet, loosening the bonds of gravity with each more infrequent visit until he needn’t ever return at all. Was that how celestial bodies worked?  
  
Terror, John’s old friend, fluttered in his stomach. “Butterflies,” he said, breathlessly, from around his ciggie.  
  
“Hmm?” Paul was looking at his scrap of paper and biting his thumb, a gesture John had seen a thousand times. It should have been comforting.  
  
“Butterflies. I got it. Gimme the guitar.”  
  
Paul passed it over without looking up, without seeing anything (tell me what you see). “Why don’t we go inside and get one of yours, then we can both have one, you know? And a new notebook.”  
  
“Nah, I got it.” In the gossipy sunlight, John was less likely to try anything stupid. Like banging his heart on Paul’s uncaring head until one or the other cracked open like an oyster. F, G, G _aug_. Butterflies. “It’s a nothing. Besides. It’s just an LP. They don’t have themes, Paul.”  
  
  



	2. 1961: A Hamburg Teenage Opera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul is the problem-solver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first time trying a Paul POV, whoops. Thus I'm not so kind to Stu.

1961: Hamburg

“Looking back on it now, I think it was little tinges of jealousy because Stu was John’s friend.” So said Paul.  
  


__________________

  
Sunday night had lurched into Monday morning and right on past their official stop-time hours ago. Paul was dead tired, half-drunk, and had bruised fingers from banging too hard on the lower keys of the Top Ten’s broken-down piano, trying to hide the lack of a decent bassline.  
  
It was still the funnest fun he’d ever had while upright. This was the life, son: booze, women, freedom, and eight-plus hours of rocking the crowds with his best friend—friends—every single day? There were very few flies buzzing around to spoil Paul’s jam buttie.  
  
Not that he was one hundred percent upright. Any moment he might conk out right onto the piano, and if he even dared, everyone’s threats to pill him like a dog would become finger-down-the-throat reality. Luckily Tony had called for another run-through of _My Bonnie;_ if they were repeating songs, they were finit for the night. And Paul could play _My Bonnie_ in his sleep. Just give him an instrument, any instrument, and he’d prove it, you know?  
  
This time around they played it for nobody. All the promising birds had cleared out—just as well, because there weren’t enough cornflakes in Hamburg to power Paul through an erection tonight—and the few sailors that remained were pissed out of their flares on lager and Babycham and were only waiting to be hauled up by the armpits and dumped onto the street. Even Astrid sat alone; Jurgen and Klaus had buggered off an hour past.   
  
Voice hoarse, Tony crooned one last _back home to meeee_. Paul hummed his accompanying _ooh-oh-eee_ , Stu fumblefingered a chord that fooled nobody, and John, bug-eyed and overprellied, windmilled a few jangling Gs before screeching to rouse the drunks.  
  
“Wakey wakey! That’s all ya get tonight, ya fuckin’ Krauts, All ‘cept you, luv.”  
  
This last was directed at Astrid. Her slow clap and slower smile were as tres chic as ever, and through the long hours not a single hair on her darling head had strayed out of place, and not a wrinkle dared to mar her licorice-stick getup as she stood and strolled stageside to pucker her lips for Stu’s reward. “You were wonderful, my angel,” she told him in her stilted English.  
  
Pffft. That wasn’t truth. That was love, and everyone knew it.  
  
And therein lay one of the flies in Paul’s jam: Stu, who had returned to the Beatles just when everyone thought he’d fucked off to the artiste’s life for good. He liked being in a band but couldn’t play, and didn’t care if he could, and never tried to get better. Paul wasn’t the only one who thought so, but he was the lad voted most likely to say it aloud.  
  
And he’d learned on their first Hamburg trip that he couldn’t always say it, neither; one too many cracks about poor ickle Stu’s playing and Paul’d be called an _annoying prat,_ and suffer being shuffled outside the circle for a day or two, forced once more to hover in orbit of the core gang like Sputnik— until, of course, they needed him for something. Then, at last, he’d be graciously allowed back into the tender fellowship of his own band.   
  
Fuck that for a milkshake. Especially after the stellar shows they’d had without Stu back home, where George and John had perfectly enjoyed the bliss of having at least half a good rhythm section.   
  
Life was a balancing act, y’see. Always had been – at least since his mum had died. At home Paul had to keep Pop happy, doing the things a good son should, to ensure he could also keep doing the things a good son wanted to do. With the Beatles, there was John to keep happy. John was … well, brilliant and daft, and their connection had become intrinsic to Paul’s existence already, like the sun or the river Mersey, you know? Just there, and meant to be there. The buttie and the jam, the Presley and the Elvis: together they were unstoppable.  
  
But being daft and brilliant, John required a certain, _hmm_ , je ne say deft hand in the handling. You had to read his mind, or at least pay very close attention to the Mersey currents, to keep that boat afloat. Paul usually managed it: he was a problem-solver, after all. Yet John was adamant that Stu be allowed to drag on their scene for as long as he wanted.   
  
Paul’s finger in the water told him that meant that John needed Stu for something, but Paul hadn’t quite sussed out yet what that was. He had private suspicions he’d never voice even to himself; he’d been side-stage in Gambier Terrace, after all, for their gang’s art-school philosophizing over life’s wounds, the drunken discussions of The Answer to Existence that went everywhere and ended up in a snoring, nowhere heap on the floor. The Jac and Gambier crowd were very, um, Bohemian. Experimental.  
  
As ever, Paul’s mind slithered away from such uncomfortable thoughts. The answers meant nothing, and the way out was forward, not inward. Hard work, not jabber. If he worked at it, he’d figure out how to flow Stu on outta there so the Beatles could excel, accelerate, straight out to the stars, wahoo! They’d need to be at their best for that.  
  
Speaking of Bests, Pete wasn’t, either. They forgot he was there half the time he was, and when he was gone, nobody cared. “Night lads,” he said, and, hands in pockets, slouched out the door to … do whatever it was he did.  
  
Everyone else had to clear out their gear. Paul and George unplugged amps while Stu and Astrid made kissyface and John unslung his guitar and shuffled from foot to foot.   
  
“On to breakfast. I’m ravishing,” he said. He hopped offstage and never stopped bouncing. “Cornflakes mitt milch. Cornflakes Walter Mitty. Mitty mitty mitty—”  
  
“Christ, you’re like a toddler, you know,” Paul ventured. “When did you last use your bunk for sleep?”  
  
John glared. “Who the fuck cares? Sleep’s for the wicked or the weak. I’m hungry.”  
  
Everyone looked at Paul. They seemed to be waiting for either a scene or a decision; Paul satisfied the need for the latter. “Breakfast it is, then.”  
  
Tony bugged off to find Rosi, and George and Paul huffed and stomped up the four flights of stairs (that would make a sexy rhythm for a backbeat, Paul would have to remember it for a song, if he and John ever got time to write again) and stashed their gear in the room.  
  
“Don’t think John got any kip at all last night,” George said quietly as they jogged their way back down (one-two, one-two, one-two-three-four!).  
  
“Thought not.”  
  
“Nothin’ new there.” George shrugged, then eyed Paul side-wise. “You slept like a vampire. Right through the fucking and the fun.”  
  
“Yeah? Maybe that’s how I stay lookin’ so fresh.”  
  
“Does that make you the weak or the wicked, then?”  
  
“That’s jealousy talkin’,” Paul joked.  
  
George snorted. “Not me who’s jealous.”  
  
“What’s that bloody s’posed to mean?”  
  
“Nothin’ at all, handsome lad,” George said with a blown kiss, and jogged even faster down the precarious steps, _onetwothree onetwothree_. George was famous for that; he’d keep himself to himself for hours and then spew out some cryptic crap he’d never explain.   
  
Though Mike had said the same thing to Paul once, when he’d been ranting after a show. _Don’t be so jealous, Paul. You’re a better player than any of ‘em_. Mike and George: always good for a dose of brotherly annoyance given with a sweet _soupcon_ of brotherly pride.  
  
Besides, Paul thought. You couldn’t really call it jealousy, could you? You could be jealous of your girl. Not of your mate. Mates. Even when you’d mended each other’s souls, over and over, with the love of rock ‘n roll?   
  
No, Paul was just a perfectionist, and no, Stu was not his equal. In many ways.  
  
“Should take yer medicine. Learn to keep up,” George taunted from a few steps down.  
  
“Geroff me back,” Paul muttered, and sped up.   
  
He didn’t want to be addicted to drugs. But he didn’t want to be a Pete, neither. Da always told him and Mike, _watch out for the drugs_. But he also said, _you have to give to receive_. Maybe Paul would try a pill, some time, just to be a mate. A half a pill? He wouldn’t gobble ‘em like John did.  
  
At breakfast, John also gobbled his Cornflakes Walter Mitty, splashing milk over his face until he frothed at the mouth.  
  
“You look like an old, rabid hound,” Stu teased.  
  
“Life’s a dream, but the dreaming is hard, son.”  
  
“Sh-boom, sh-boom,” Paul— enlivened plenty by breakfast, thank you— offered.  
  
“It’s a hard dream sweetheart,” John fired back. He pretend-wanked with his fist under the table. “Really, really, rock-rocky hard.”  
  
“Ya da-da-da-da-da-da-da, woohoo!” Paul added for soundtrack. He felt a bit giddy. Trust John to make anything into a double entendre.  
  
Stu and Astrid watched them with creases in their foreheads, Astrid likely because she couldn’t follow their English, such as it was. And who knew with Stu?  
  
“Pardon, luv,” John told Astrid, for his rudeness. Then, to Stu, “You’re not hungry?”  
  
Stu had barely touched the hearty German breakfast Astrid had ordered for him. No wonder he was such a scrawny feller. Astrid rubbed his shoulder. “Eat?” she asked.  
  
Stu patted her hand. “Nah. My … well.” He gestured at his side, and Astrid rubbed that for him too.  
  
“My poor Stu.”  
  
John frowned. “Issit yer appendix again? Should get that looked at afore it takes you down.”  
  
Stu waved that off airily, manfully. “Oh, I may. I may not; doctors never tell me anything useful. I can still play.”  
  
“Mmm hmm,” Tony said, glancing at Paul.  
  
Paul remained, he thought, exceptionally, diplomatically, _valiantly_ silent on that score. He was so silent, he deserved congratulations.  
  
Tony, now. Tony knew Stu couldn’t play. He was a musician, after all, a pro, the guitar-man’s guitar man. That first night they’d played with him, their second night at the Top Ten, Paul had seen his face when Stu couldn’t barely go five chords before fluffing the beat, a _one-two-three/five/four/oops/thmmm_ that made even Tony The Pro flub a vocal and flash raised eyebrows at John. And John had just quirked his thin lips up on one side in an amused and tolerant half-grin.  
  
Four years of being daft and brilliant John Lennon’s (best) friend had taught Paul to interpret most of John’s facial expressions, and be ye not slack about that, son, neither. A certain pursing of the cheeks meant “I’m bored. Let’s do one.” A particular narrowing of the eyes could mean either “I can’t see me own nose” or “I’m going to pour my beer on this bloke if he don’t shut ‘is gob,” depending on the context.   
  
This half-smile had said, “it doesn’t matter. Stu looks good.”  
  
Stu didn’t look so good, actually, Paul thought. He was so frail he was wearing Astrid’s clothing, for Christ’s sake.   
  
Now, what if Stu were to fall too ill to play? Woe, he’d have to go back to doing what he was good at, which was blowing people’s minds with canvas. In Hamburg. Permanently. That’d solve Paul’s—their—problem quite nicely, offer a paradise worth _sh-booming_ for. No skin off anybody’s elbows, no hard feelings, right?   
  
Paul felt his face warm with shame at the uncharitable thought. He hadn’t been raised to think those kinds of things, not by Mary McCartney, not by Jim McCartney. Maybe he actually was jealous, to be such an awful person. It was a good thing nobody really could read his mind.  
  
His cheeks heated further when he realized John was staring at him.   
  
John today was in a certain mood, a mood to push, push, push. “Careful, Stu, my boy. Wouldn’t want to end up with a delicate stomach like Paul has,” he said, gaze never leaving Paul’s.  
  
“’M fine. Feel good,” Paul said, brushing that off at least as manfully as Stu had.  
  
“Glad to hear it. You’ve circles under your eyes, you know.”  
  
John’s stare seemed to drop from Paul’s eyes to his mouth. That was another habit of John’s that Paul had never quite sussed, either. His stomach skittered warmly, not with illness, but the attention, _stupid, stupid_ , a sensation that reminded him of … other, older feelings. _Rock n’ roll in the soul_. Again requiring distraction, Paul fluttered his eyelashes at Tony and Rosi.   
  
“Rosi, have I got circles under my eyes?”   
  
Rosi giggled and fluffed her blonde hair, neither admission nor denial.  
  
“Hey heyyyy, no makin’ eyes at my girl,” Tony joked.  
  
“Yeah.” Now John was frowning. “You gotta watch him, with those big, ol’ peepers and long, ol’ faggy lashes—”  
  
Stu groaned suddenly, drawing everyone’s attention from what Paul thought a stupidly interesting discussion. _Trust John to make it about fags, too._   
  
“Oh, sorry, sorry,” Stu said.  
  
Astrid’s expression screwed tightly, like she was going to cry. “Stu…”  
  
“It was brief, sweetheart. I’m good. Let’s go, why don’t we?”  
  
“That’s an idea,” John said, properly distracted. He stubbed his cigarette, hissing, in the dregs of his milk. Everyone slapped a few coins on the table and they left.  
  
They all lit smokes directly again outside. Rosy-fingered dawn had crept into the world while they were eating; traffic had picked up along the Reeperbahn, people heading to work, or heading home. Nobody paid a lick of attention to a group of worn-down, leather-clad lads and lasses strolling along of a morn, not in St. Pauli.  
  
Which didn’t suit a hyperactive John, who had no bird on the hook and apparently hadn’t caused enough trouble for the world for the last twenty-four hours. He insinuated himself between Stu and Astrid, encompassing both in a sloppy hug.  
  
“Let’s gi’em a show. Cocosse, lads, hop to it!”  
  
“ _Mach shau_ is over,” George groaned.  
  
“Not for us, never for us. Are you up to it, Paul? Since you won’t take the Prellies…”  
  
Buoyed by annoyance at all of them, Paul ventured, “Should be more worried about Stu, y’know. Such long hours as we toil seem to’ve taken their toll.”  
  
Stu shot a mild grin in Paul’s general direction. “Oh, you want the bass that badly?”  
  
Whoa-ho! It wasn’t like Stu to fire back. Paul smiled sweetly before turning away. Stu was not Paul’s equal, and neither was he Paul’s buddy. “I don’t need it, thanks. I only picked it up because you weren’t around.”  
  
Beside Paul, George huffed quietly around his ciggie.  
  
“That’s it! You start it, Macca,” John crowed, buoyed to further heights by gang friction. He tackled Paul from behind, making him cough his ciggie onto the sidewalk, then pushed him to all fours on the dirty cobbles. _I’ve miscalculated_ , Paul thought, but John merely used him as a springboard to swing his legs over. His boots clomped on the sidewalk in front of Paul’s face, and then he whooped and ran a few steps forward.   
  
He bent over and George picked up the game, flying over Paul and then John in a whirl of skinny legs. Paul vaulted them both. Thus had they entertained the Krauts more than once, and the gig didn’t fail now; honking cars, swiveling heads and surprised laughter followed them down the block, since leather-clad lads playing about like infants did demand attention. Down the street they leapt, past the strip clubs and beer-joints, the Lady L, the Regina, the Colibri, heading for home, such as it was.   
  
The _Yumping Piedels_ , Uwe had once called them, and shown him and John a little box he kept in his inner jacket pocket— from which he often produced various rare and fascinating treasures—full of tiny clicking, popping seeds. _Mexican jumping beans_ , they were called.  
  
Stu decided to join the fun, as Paul discovered when he felt a push and Stu’s skinny frame landed in front of him. Stu jogged forward and bent to withstand John’s energetic leap and George’s clumsy one, and then it was Paul’s turn.  
  
Unfortunately, Stu was holding a grudge: the second Paul laid hands on his shoulders, Stu expelled a pained “ooof” and crumpled to the sidewalk. Instead of flying, Paul went off-balance and skidded chin-first into the broken glass and loose pebbles of the sidewalk.   
  
“Oh! Stu! Nein,” Astrid shrieked, running forward and leaping over Paul’s sprawled form to kneel at Stu’s side and pry him from the ground.  
  
Paul climbed to his feet with dignity, and brushed himself off with same. He fought the urge to give Stu a boot to the bollocks and to think instead. He’d always been better with brain than his fists, anyway. It was Stu who’d miscalculated.  
  
“Who’s broken?” Tony called from behind.  
  
“Stu, Stu,” was the only word Astrid knew in that moment; she cried it over and over as she picked up his fallen sunglasses.  
  
George and John turned to look back at Paul, George with wide eyes and John with narrowed ones. John surprised Paul by smiling, slowly, gaze slipping down.   
  
The numbness from the blow to Paul’s chin had faded and he felt the sting of dirt and the trickle of blood and the press of John’s gaze, and thought of the feelings he’d avoided: John was very Bohemian. Experimental. Paul grew tight and hot inside, like the first time he’d wanked in front of others, in front of John— _oh, we don’t look_ (he did), _the room’ll be dark_ (it wasn’t, not completely).  
  
Ahh. Stu was jealous. They were the flies in each other’s jam. And this was his band, and John’s band.   
  
Something in Paul’s face caused John to bark a nervous laugh, and Paul remembered that mind-reading between (best) friends sometimes went both ways.   
  
“It’s all in fun. We don’t really hate you, you know,” John said, a show of bravado for everyone else.   
  
“You don’t have to talk to me like you do him,” Paul said with a syrupy smile, more sugary than the one he’d given Pop when he’d convinced him to let Paul go to Hamburg the first time. Paul had a problem to solve, and he’d do it with a grin pasted on, and if anyone objected to having their elbows skinned in the process, they could go fuck themselves and Paul would give them the penny for the banana. “Save your pity, Johnny.”  
  
John’s eyebrows rose and his eyes held an expression that might be called _unholy glee_ , and might also be called _abject terror_. Either one worked for Paul.  
  
“I’m okay—it was all me, lads, gosh,” Stu cut in from his seat on the sidewalk. He patted Astrid’s head and stared directly at Paul as if also trying to divine his thoughts, and Paul knew that Stu knew that Paul knew that he’d fucked up. Stu coughed into his fist. “I’m okay, really— I suppose I overestimated my strength this morning,”  
  
“That’s too bad, Stu,” Paul said, and walked to the Top Ten and up all four flights of steps (one-two one-two one-two-three-four). He would try a pill—just one!—tonight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> So I do adore the teenaged interpersonal drama that was the early Beatles, and Paul's role. I tried to give him some more agency than the usual story we get from the biographers, dunno if it worked. I would read thousands of pages of the Beatles in Hamburg on a day-to-day basis, seriously, where does this diary exist? Where are the rest of Stu's letters?
> 
> Comments, critique, all are welcomed!


	3. 1966: A Cincinnati Rainout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An already stressful tour, and a rainout in Cincinnati. John is being drawn back, because he and Paul really do need each other.

_Q: Do you think this is going to be a controversial tour like the Philippines?_   
_Paul McCartney: Oh, no, no, no. It’s going to be fine._   
_Q: What makes you say that, Paul?_   
_McCartney: Oh, it’s gonna be fine, you watch. Yeah, great._

********

August 1966  
  
The towering banks of lights shone downwards, illuminating the field, the field of play, the field where they’d soon be playing at being musicians, ha ha, ho ho. From his position hunched in the concrete doorway (bunker), John was hidden in shadow, unseen by the multitudes but able to peer out into the not-quite-daylight, to see the canvas-tented stage crouching lonely in the middle of a protective moat of dirt and grass, see the thousands upon thousands of faces circling (circusing) it, quivering forms bursting with pent-up screams.  
  
Bobby Ebbs was singing about Sunny, and you could just about hear him.  
  
Even surrounded by suited and cologned men, John fancied he could smell the echo of the athletes who normally sat on the bottom-worn wooden benches, the body odor and dust, old sweat and farts from exertion and nervous anticipation. Or maybe that was just the rain.  
  
The lights did not show the clouds massing overhead and pregnant with moisture, but John knew they were there. If he wanted he could show off, could point at his old leg injury from the Hamburg days, and tell everyone like a geezer how his scar was better than any old barometer, how it ached more with every gain of an atmospheric point. But the Beatles Machine had all the modcons and he was getting regular weather reports filtering up from the offices in the bowels of Crosley Field.  
  
“It could rain at any moment, they say,” he heard Eppy yell from parts unseen.  
  
“Rain at any moment is likely,” Tony relayed unnecessarily from somewhere not far behind.  
  
“They say it’s definitely gonna rain, you know,” came Paul’s voice from somewhere next to John’s ear. He was so close John could smell him, too. Soap and clean hair and brushed teeth.  
  
“Fortunate that you’re here to tell me these things,” John replied.   
  
Paul huffed but said nothing. Just John being John, you know.  
  
But John wasn’t even that. Here was a John who’d been through some shit all right, a much less nasty John than he’d been just a few weeks ago. A year ago.  
  
In order to not meet expectations, that John had said “fuck you” to Beatle madness and flagrantly buried himself in the country and built a wall of quartz around his soul – trading it later for diamond, because he was a fucking Beatle after all. Any lingering fires of ambition he’d quelled with steady dosages of lysergic acid. Who cared about love lost when you could spend hours following the cracks in the ceiling, or seeing the universe in the pulse of the burning cherries of cigarette after cigarette?   
  
They’d had a good year, had he and Ritchie and George, of riding go-carts at Ritchie’s and laughing at square old Paul, too afraid to expand his mind with the rest of them. Then John’d spent a few months behind a wall of silent, seething resentment that Paul had turned on without them. Now and then, of course, John had managed to rouse himself to open bitterness over Paul’s bright star, the good songs he brought.   
  
Didn’t matter; no bitterness seeped through Paul’s shell. Fortified and artified, he’d dropped two lines of _Daisy Hawkins_ into John’s lap, in front of everyone. “Finish this off, why don’t you,” as breezy as you please. And then once John had swallowed his anger (hurt) and finally helped him finish the lyrics, Paul had run off with George Martin and scored the damned thing for strings. Strings! They sounded great; that was two A-sides now. Paul could probably just set himself up in front of an orchestra forever, no Beatles required. He was a regular Gus Grissom, was Paul.   
  
It took finishing the record with George to get a revenge. A reaction. To remember Paul’s Kryptonite: he hated rejection. But they needed one more song for _Revolver_ , and John had one.  
  
“How’s that, then?” Paul had asked, exasperated, after playing some bloody marvelous bassline as usual.  
  
“Too much. We’ve already laid out the lines for this one,” George said. “At John’s house.”  
  
“We’re good,” John added. “It’s about one of our trips anyway.”  
  
“Fuck you, then,” Paul, fists clenched and puffy cheeks pink, shouted. He dropped his Hofner clattering into its stand and stomped out, lighting a cigarette with an angry slash of flame from pocket to lips, slamming the studio door behind him.   
  
Well. That had been a new one.  
  
George picked up the Hofner to the raised eyebrows of the suits and ties in the mixing room. “He’ll be back,” he mumbled.  
  
“Huh,” John had replied, not a laugh nor assent nor denial.  
  
There was a sudden flash brighter than daylight, and a rumble that shook the stadium more than even Beatle fans could have done. John felt the twitch against his shoulder when Paul actually jumped.  
  
Seemed like thunder or firecrackers would get a reaction out of him, too. John smiled to himself and cupped his hands around his mouth.   
  
“Innnncominnnnng!” he whooped. _Let the bombs fly._  
  
“At least the stage is too far from the crowd for cherry bombs,” Paul noted.  
  
When had he started reading John’s mind again? “Not for bullets, man. Not for bullets.”  
  
Any reply Paul might have made was drowned by the roar of rain, heavy drops drumming on the tin roof of the players’… cave-thingy. The dugout. The baseball team that played here were on a road-trip, ten days away from home, playing to crowds across America. Sort of like them, but without the screaming and the piss.  
  
Paul hadn’t come back, that night they’d finished _She Said She Said._  
  
John felt Paul’s breath in his ear. “They’ll have to clear the stands,” Paul said, loudly.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Paul huffed again. “The lightning. It’s dangerous, you know.” Worry tinged his voice. “All those young fans.”  
  
Ah, yes. The fans. John appreciated fans, too, just not piled up in sleeping bags at his gate and pestering Cyn and Julian, nor massed before them, crushing him with the gravity of their devotion.  
  
Out on the battlefield, Bobby Ebbs had had enough. Mid-song and guitar in one hand, he leapt off the stage and ran towards them. He was laughing when he reached the dugout; water streamed down his dark face. “Shit’s sparking up there, man,” he said. “Mic tried to set my teeth on fire.”  
  
“Fuck,” Paul breathed. “Tony! Tell Brian the electricals are getting wet!”  
  
“It’s raining and the electrical gear is getting wet,” Tony dutifully relayed. John could just about hear Eppy’s reply.  
  
“What did you say? Did you say it’s raining?”  
  
“It’s raining!” Tony shouted back.  
  
“Christ,” John muttered.   
  
“Ah-ah-ah!” Paul teased; he’d somehow heard— or maybe just sensed— John’s snark. “Don’t say it. Someone might hear and report it.”  
  
Very likely. Someone in the cave was snapping their photo that very moment. John flashed a dutiful rictus grin, Paul and Bobby hovering and smiling over his shoulder. Bobby dripped onto Paul’s suit.  
  
“Can we get a break?” John managed from between his clenched teeth.  
  
“Thank you, gentlemen. Can we have a moment?” Paul said, oozing forward to pat friendly hands on the pressmen’s shoulders. The starry-eyed Face of the Beatles was on the job. “We need some privacy for a group meeting, if you please. Thank you so much!”  
  
Paul’s jacket rode up as he embraced the photographers. Christ, his pants were tight. They’d all slimmed down the last few months, Paul less than the others. Jane—or her mum, more likely—was a good cook.  
  
John lit a cigarette and turned away. He knew exactly when they’d started reading each others’ minds again. Touring, shoving the four of them up each others’ noses twenty-four hours a day. It was hard to forget all one’s old memories and self-recrimination when faced eight days a week with air travel and soul-draining pressure, let alone Paul’s tight trousers. They made it difficult to forget he’d been the one to pull back first.   
  
He was going to be the first to break, wasn’t he? There was nothing to look at but each other. And sometimes Paul could be reached.  
  
John started limping down the concrete stairwell. Paul caught up quickly; John felt the buzz of fingers on his elbow.  
  
“You all right?”  
  
“Yeah. It’s just me leg,” John admitted. He shook out the offending leg, shook off Paul’s fingers, and grabbed the stair rail.  
  
“The stair case is your ENEMY!” Paul said, in his Orson Welles voice.  
  
It was an old joke that stairs had it in for John. With good reason: John had a too-clear memory of the battle he’d fought with the rickety staircase in the Top Ten. It’d been 1961, and he’d been drunk. Of course. The recollection of that particular drunk had stuck because it had been spectacular for his two days of lost sleep, the two cases of Babycham on stage, and the knowledge that either Stu or Paul was going to leave the band, and that John couldn’t stop it from happening. He’d been betting on Stu, but he lost either way.  
  
Drowning one’s sorrows were all well and good but exhaustion had caught up with him eventually. He’d returned to the club so late it was early, gone stumbling up the four flights of steps to their rooms, eyes up instead of on what his feet were doing. He must’ve tripped. That part was hazy, a vague nightmare of tumbling and bumping and pain, jolting his head, his back, his shin, and finally _landing_ on the _landing_ , crumpled and moaning until Paul had come out to investigate.  
  
“Fuck me, John, what’ve you done now,” Paul said, appearing upside-down. John remembered that because of his scraped chin and bare chest.  
  
“Paullll… I can’t walk.”  
  
“Of course you can’t.” Paul wedged between John and the wall and hefted him under the shoulders until he could be seen right-side up, blurry but all exasperation and concern and helpfulness. Everything he always had been.  
  
“Paul, I fucked up me leg.”  
  
John winced as Paul reached out and almost touched it, then snatched his hand away. “George! George!” he shouted up the stairs, then looked at John, dark eyes ringed with dark circles. “I suppose we should call a doctor.”  
  
“No! No, please, tomorrow. I’ll go t’morrow. Today. Later. Jus’ help me up, I just wanna go to bed…”  
  
“Fine. George!” George never appeared, at least John didn’t think so. Paul braced himself on the wall to haul John somewhat to his feet, strong-arming him under the armpit. Stu could never have done that. Stu was too small. Stu was leaving. John was crying.  
  
“Don’t leave me, please. Don’t leave me, Paul…” he’d bawled, alcohol and misery washing away all his walls, and God, but he’d hated himself many times after for saying that, for crying, even though it could have been for any number of reasons. He’d hated himself more for the sloppy kiss he’d planted on Paul’s cheek, the one that had landed on the corner of his mouth. He’d hated the way Paul had frozen stiff, then gone on as if it’d never happened.  
  
Five years later Paul was still carrying him —even John’s deepest and most vituperative fears had to admit that. If Paul wasn’t there, if he’d launched himself off months ago like Project Gemini (ha ha), this tour would’ve killed John already .  
  
Still, John managed the concrete steps to the bowels of the stadium very well, thank you. Even if he couldn’t quite bear to shake off Paul’s steady grip on his shoulder. Below ground they could still hear the crowd, chanting, a crushing, crushing roar: _we want the Beatles!_  
  
Tony called down the stairs. “Mal and Neil’re going to go out and try to see if the amps will work.”  
  
“Christ, they’d better be careful,” Paul said.  
  
“Fuck me, they better take care,” John said, at the same time. _Up each others’ noses. Up their arses_. Once upon a time. Tightness grew under John’s breastbone.  
  
Paul’d had a bird in the room, that night in Hamburg. He’d sent her off in stuttering German and put John to bed like a child.  
  
John had kissed Paul since then, you know. More than once.  
  
They reached the control center, where Brian was talking on the phone. He wore a crease between his eyebrows. Ritch and George were perched on the edge of the desk, listening to the one-sided conversation.  
  
“Yes, well, if the rain doesn’t stop… I know. But if they’re not going to follow the terms of the contract, which specifically required a shelter in case of inclement weather. Yes, it was. We always make a good faith effort to fulfill our contracts, and we ask the same in return. This isn’t a decision we would take lightly…”  
  
“Pardon me,” Paul said, a near-whisper. He ducked into the band’s dressing area.  
  
Ritch flashed raised eyebrows at John, who shrugged. Maybe Paul was taking a piss? Combing his hair?  
  
Brian was still talking. “I’ll have to consult with my colleagues. Yes. Thank you. Goodbye.”  
  
He hung up and looked at John first. “How bad is it out there?” he asked.  
  
“Pouring buckets,” John told him.  
  
“Hell,” George muttered.  
  
Brian’s already-flushed face was turning redder. “And the stage cover is quite inadequate. I’m so weary of the incompetence of these promoters—”  
  
Tony burst into the room, huffing and wide-eyed. “Mal got electrocuted!”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Dear God!”  
  
“The fuck?”  
  
Everyone jumped to rush out, but Tony spread his hands across the doorway, still breathing hard. “No, sorry. I mean, he’s okay. He just got knocked a few feet trying to connect George’s amp—”  
  
“I’m okay!” came Mal’s voice, shouting from upstairs, and John breathed a sigh of relief to hear it. He looked for Paul to share the relief, forgetting that Paul wasn’t in the room.   
  
“Join us down here, please,” Brian called.  
  
Mal came in, grunting and dripping but not visibly singed, and was greeted with a series of back-slaps. He pulled off his glasses and shook them. Once Neil joined them the gang were all there. Well, mostly. Neil lit Mal and himself cigarettes with trembling fingers.   
  
Mal took a long puff before spilling. “I’m okay. But I’ve had the shock of me life, literally. I’m not going back out there and neither are you!”  
  
“I fear we may have to cancel the show. There’s a slight chance we could reschedule, but we’ve never done this before,” Brian said, looking at John. Then he glanced past him and frowned. “Where’s Paul? We need to make a decision.”  
  
“He’s…” Ritchie said, motioning off in the direction Paul had gone.  
  
“Pissing himself, maybe,” John joked.  
  
“Can someone please locate him? It’s not like Paul to wander off in a situation.”  
  
No, it wasn’t. Even when you half expected him to. John’s sigh was a show in itself, of long-suffering and woe, suppose I’ll go, poor, poor me.  
  
 _We want the Beatles! We want the Beatles!  
_  
The thunder of the wanting, wet crowd followed John even into the bowels of the stadium, all the way to the locker room-cum-dressing room. Where there was no sign of Paul.  
  
 _We want the Beatles! We want – unngh.  
_  
That was no chant; that was a moan. John knocked open the door to the toilets and encountered Paul at last, clutching a sink and retching.   
  
“Jesus, Paul,” John said. He crossed his arms and waited by the door. His own stomach had been tied in knots for days and the sounds of Paul being unsuccessfully sick made his throat burn sour. In sympathy, he supposed.  
  
Paul’s face in the mirror was pitiful. His eyes were dark-ringed and hollow, his cheeks wet.   
  
Something—inevitability, perhaps-- tugged John over and made him pat Paul gently on the back. “There, there,” he soothed, scratching Paul’s shoulder-blade, the slick gabardine of their suits. “There, there, there’s nothing in there, you know.”  
  
“I know that,” Paul managed, nasally and doleful. He retched again regardless. The strain of his shoulder muscles translated through to John’s scritching fingers.  
  
John removed his hand; it wasn’t really helping. Not helping Paul, anyway. “They want to cancel the show. We need your vote.”  
  
“Oh, dear god,” Paul moaned. “We’ve never done that. The poor fans.”  
  
 _We want the Beatles! We want the Beatles!  
_  
John perched his arse on a sink and looked at Real Paul instead of Mirror Paul. He crossed his arms again, trying to resist the urge to ruffle Paul’s hair. Starry-eyed Paul, the beautiful Face of the Beatles, drooling into a sink like a miserable twat.   
  
“We’ll see if we can’t whip them into a real frenzy. See just how far we can push them before they snap. It’ll be like Cleveland and Memphis and Manila rolled into one.”  
  
“Ungh. Urk.” Paul gagged, then turned on the faucet and splashed himself. When finished he kept his hands up, covering his face so only his nose peeked out between his fingers. He stood that way for several seconds longer than John expected, his cherry nose the only crack in the façade. Tightness grew anew beneath John’s ribcage.  
  
Finally Paul spoke from between his fingers. “I don’t care. Do it if you have to. I just really don’t care. Really.”  
  
John’s stomached flipped. He stared. Here he’d always thought he’d like to see Paul taken down a peg or two, and worked ceaselessly towards that goal himself, sometimes! But suddenly he was left feeling like he was dangling in midair, kicking out for a ladder that wasn’t there. Paul loved playing live. He loved the crowds. He was the backbone of this entire fucking tour. Paul, who browbeat the press so John wouldn’t have to.  
  
“You’re having one on, right? I—we need you.” That felt like admitting too much. “We need you there to make—join—the decision. Brian will—oh, Paul. Fuck, I don’t know.”  
  
Something in his voice made Paul drop his hands from his face, and something in his face made Paul wrinkle around the nose. Then Paul closed his eyes and took a visibly deep and audibly shaky breath. “D’ye have a ciggie?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“A smoke. A cigarette. I need one. I don’t have mine, y’know.”  
  
“Beggar. O’course I do.” John dug around in his inner jacket pocket and handed Paul a cigarette with fingers that barely trembled. Paul lit the smoke and took another deep breath, this one full of refreshing tobacco. There was nothing for it but for John to fire one for himself; soon the heavy atmosphere was engulfed in smoke.  
  
“Ta.”  
  
John waved it off. “So what d’ye think?”  
  
“Right. So, well. I don’t want to disappoint the fans,” Smoky Obscured Paul said. “But I don’t want to be electrocuted. I don’t want any of us to be electrocuted. Or shot. Last night was …”  
  
He trailed off, though John knew exactly what he meant. Who knew Paul had been shaken so badly? John was the one everyone had looked at when the fireworks started. Because it was his fault and his opinions and his cross to bear (take that, Jesus), and he wasn’t bearing it-tat-tall, was he? God, he wanted a big, fat joint. Or to hide somewhere and trip his bollocks off. Regardless, his shrug was carelessness personified.  
  
“That was just kids having a lark. Are ye going to shut that off?”  
  
“What?”  
  
John gestured with his ciggie at the still-running faucet. Christ, Paul was in a state.   
  
Paul wrenched the tap shut and stared at himself in the mirror for a few moments. He wasn’t much to look at (yes, he was) so he glanced back at Real John.  
  
“Will we have to reschedule?”  
  
“Eppy thinks we can.” John smoked even harder.  
  
 _We want the Beatles! We want the Beatles!  
_  
“So many of them,” Paul said on a sigh. He peered at John, his eyes huge and wet, his pale lips pressed into a thin line. “Whatever you and the others want is fine.”  
  
Paul had said that, knowing that John and the others might just cancel and fuck off forever. That he, Paul, was the only one who wanted to be out there, waving and smiling and wriggling his arm out the window to sign autographs.   
  
Paul was that worried. For them. For him, John. The man who let the fans sleep on his goddamned sidewalk.   
  
John had to glance away as cracks spiderwebbed across his own façade. “Are you coming?” he asked.  
  
“I need a few more to meself, please,” Paul said with a wet-sounding laugh. There was a clink of metal on porcelain, the whisper of gabardine, the peripheral impression of Paul leaning his forehead on the mirror.  
  
John couldn’t bear to look. “All right, then,” he said, and ran the nearest tap to drown the cherry on his ciggie. He tossed the butt into the trash on his way out.   
  
He’d be back; he’d always be back. Gravity was inevitable.  
  
The Beatles Control-Room Pow-Wow was ongoing when John reentered the office. Something in his face made Brian’s eyes widen.  
  
“Are you well? Where is Paul?”  
  
John locked his chin. He was titanium. He was aluminium. Something. Imelda Marcos and Jesus had tried to take him down, and they’d failed.  
  
“He’s taking a moment. We discussed it.”   
  
“Was he pissing himself, then,” George asked from around a cigarette, laconic and studied. John understood the unspoken message: he was supposed to not care. But it wasn’t George’s place to worry about that, was it?  
  
“Geroff it,” John snapped. He looked back at Brian. “We’ll cancel tonight, and if we can, play tomorrow before we fly to … wherever it is that’s next.”  
  
“St. Louis,” Brian said slowly. “Weather permitting?”  
  
“Yeah, whatever. That,” John said. He stuck his hands in his pockets and began to whistle. _You gave to me your all and all. Now I feel ten feet tall. Sunny, one so true._ He was Superman, and he was also Kryptonite. If only he could have donned his shades instead of blinking around his contact lenses, his pose would’ve been complete.   
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! All comments, concrit appreciated very much.
> 
> So John apparently made the decision to postpone and reschedule Cincinnati, so as not to disappoint the fans. And Paul was so stressed he was horking in the dressing rooms. What a tour, man.


	4. 1967: An Existential Crisis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lennon and McCartney are a team again. They both know the score, right? Right?

  
1967  
  
_I was saying good night to John in the hotel in Cornwall and saying thanks for doing the Nat Jackley thing. I was standing at the door and he was in bed, and we were talking about the lyrics of "I Am The Walrus", and I remember feeling he was a little frail at that time, maybe not going through one of the best periods in life, probably breaking up with his wife. He was going through a very fragile period. You've only got to look at his lyrics - 'sitting on a cornflake waiting for the van to come'. They were very disturbed lyrics."_ [Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=as2&path=ASIN/0805052488&tag=thepeoplespre-20&camp=1789&creative=9325)  
  
  
  
“Gi’us a minute, will you?” John bitched, and smacked Paul’s hand away when he made to pinch the joint out of John’s mouth. “It’s my grass, anyway.”  
  
“You owe me,” Paul teased. Quite reasonably, he thought!  
  
Nevertheless, he eased back, crossing his arms and hugging his own shoulders to ward off a shiver from the nippy cold. Tucked as the two of them were between the hotel’s hulking rubbish bin and the deserted tradesmen’s dock, they were somewhat sheltered from the worst of the Atlantic night breezes, as well as from the eyes of fans and reporters and any prying Cornish policemen. _Pretty little policemen in a row._ Still, it was a damp autumn wind and John had badly rolled the joint; it sizzled and burnt far too quickly between his teeth.  
  
John took another long, crackling pull before plucking it from his mouth and handing it over. Paul stuck it between his lips and found it wet from John’s spit; thus he misjudged his hard drag and surprised a burn onto the back of his throat that choked half the smoke out through his nose and sent his eyes stinging and watering. John snorted at him.  
  
Christ, weren’t they a pair? Like the schoolboys they’d once been, copping a smoke in the alleyway between the Inny and the Arty.  
  
“You’re like Bambi,” John said. His eyes behind his glasses were at least as watery as Paul’s. He blinked a few times before nabbing his joint back. “How d’ye figure that?”  
  
“Hmm?” Paul mumbled, trying to choke discreetly.   
  
John rolled his eyes and snabbled a quick drag before answering. “How do you figure I owe you?”  
  
“Aha! That would be because I left the bikini beauties to your tender care, didn’t I?”  
  
A quick salute and a turn with the joint were Paul’s thanks for giving away this choice filming scene. But you’d never get an overabundance of gratitude from John, not even at his best. Which he hadn’t been lately. “Poor girls were freezin’ their fucking tits off,” John mumbled.  
  
Paul shrugged and took a hit, a proper one this time. _See how they run, bomp, bomp._ “I’ll bet they looked marvelous, though.”  
  
John blinked at him and pursed his mouth into a line, drawing his cheeks tight. Paul raised an eyebrow and held the mutual glare for long seconds, turning a stare into a standoff. All John’s dourest attempts to stifle expression were doomed to fail: between Paul pulling a stone face and the effect of the grass, he eventually burst into a fit of the giggles.  
  
“Hard nipples everywhere,” John managed to squeak out between chortles.  
  
“Goose pimples, too?”  
  
“All over their blue skin. Nat was in fucking heaven, I tell you.”  
  
“Thus we are all well paid,” Paul said. He passed the joint back. The grass was kicking in at last; his belly bubbled with warmth from the incipient high and from seeing John smile, both working to take the edge off the stresses of the past week – the past two weeks.   
  
Brian was dead.   
  
And there! The memory had risen up and smacked him again, more sting to his eyes than the weed, more pointless and stupid.   
  
“We’re fucked,” John had said, not without reason. Yet Paul—they—had decided that the tonic for grief and uncertainty was to keep moving and working and they hadn’t stopped, not a day, and here they were in Cornwall: four Beatles filming yet another movie. Two of them were sneaking a joint outside their hotel. So much for telling the press they’d forsworn drugs!  
  
At least it was only grass and not the hard stuff; keeping John busy and off LSD and pills was difficult enough. Too bad they couldn’t have done the same for Brian. But Brian was—had been—an adult, and stubborn and needy in his own way.  
  
John seemed to have taken Brian’s death … could one say personally? One could think it without saying it aloud, Paul decided. John did have a tendency to, er, mystically ascribe events that were out of his control into a paean to his own faults and mistakes. He’d been making these noises, _Oh, shouldn’t’ve introduced Brian to pills_ , that sort of thing.   
  
Sure, John had maybe been an influence. Brian had been ever susceptible to John’s wishes, and John had been a drug connoisseur and proselytizer since forever and hardly met a straight he’d not wanted to turn on in some way. Present company not excepted in the slightest.  
  
It was too bad that their friend had become a cautionary tale for the iron-headed squares of society to spout regarding the inherent dangers of fame and drugs. But ultimately, Brian had mixed the wrong cocktail, made the wrong choices.  
  
Attaching blame was a pointless enterprise. The inquest had said it was an accident. There! An end of it, y’see.   
  
John’s laughing fit subsided and he wiped his eyes with a finger poked into the sleeve cuff of his turtleneck. The white fabric came away smudged with some of the camera makeup applied so carefully this afternoon by Janice and Jo.   
  
“No, no no!” Paul tugged at John’s sleeve to forestall further ruination. “Oh, it’s too late. I’ll never borrow it now. Why would you wear white, honestly.”  
  
“I like it.”  
  
“Cyn’ll have a fit.”  
  
“What, you think Cyn still does my laundry?”  
  
“Doesn’t she?” Paul took a toke from the shrinking joint. “Didn’t I hear you boast about buying the poshest and most modern of laundry equipment for her?”  
  
“She’s a fucking Beatle wife. Nothing but the best. Still, the more expensive the equipment, the more she despises it.” John took the joint back and pinched it carefully between his thin lips. He made a sucking inhale, blew smoke out. He blinked again. “Why, does Jane do yours?”  
  
“Not from the theater, she doesn’t.” She actually didn’t ever, and Paul couldn’t blame her.   
  
God, he missed her. Without her he’d no one to totally, completely relax around. To spill his worries to. Much as he found wearing a _pip-pip-cheerio_ face a good strategy for keeping up spirits, sometimes he just wanted to release some of the concerns boiling around inside him. They built up like steam.   
  
He couldn’t moan to the lads: George would tell him to meditate, and John – well. John seemed mellow enough at the moment, but he had a tendency to fall into melancholy. He’d get smacked in the face by the world and if you let him, he’d shut a door inside himself and retreat behind it to stew in his own dark thoughts. _You shoulda seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe?_  
  
But really, that was life, wasn’t it? The world gave you great things and it gave you shit, and that was just how existence worked. They’d be okay. They’d get past this. Keep pushing forward! They’d survived the other side of 1966 and come out on top, hadn’t they? _Pepper_ was still at the top of the charts. Lennon and McCartney were a team again.  
  
McCartney glanced up to find Lennon staring at him with drawn and peevish-looking eyebrows. It was an expression Paul knew of old, and could mean any number of things from _You’re hogging all the attention_ to _I hate your hair._ Paul wondered uncharitably what in hell’s bells he’d done now.   
  
But John merely stared at him for a few more moments before passing the smoke back and continuing their conversation.   
  
“Maybe it’s her mum? I can just see Maggie A scrubbing out your dungy underthings,” he said.  
  
“Huh? Oh, I don’t wear those, you know,” Paul teased with an airy wave, glad if the moment were to pass without recriminatory elaboration.  
  
“Can’t fool me, son.”  
  
“And you’d be in a position to know,” Paul riposted. Now that was a tasty bit of snark that could be taken any number of ways. Several of which he meant.  
  
“Oh dirty Maggie Mae, she ‘as taken your dirty laundry away,” John sang at him, voice wavering as he tried to keep it low, between themselves and the rubbish bin.  
  
“She never haunt the doorways of Bond Street no more,” Paul added conversationally.  
  
He ignored the references to Maggies, of which he knew several. None of them did his laundry. It didn’t work like that.  
  
When it came to choices, Paul had admittedly made his share of questionable ones. His love life was … well, it was a muddle, and that was the best that could be said for it. And lord, what he wouldn’t have given today for a toot to keep him going!  
  
At least cocaine was a take-it-or-leave-it thing. Getting off the Prellies had been nightmarish, much worse than forgoing a snort. But fuck if they hadn’t been a life-saver in Hamburg.   
  
The long-lost days of Paul’s Hamburg youth – all of five, six years ago, though it felt like twenty – were a blur sometimes, a grainy, old whirlwind film shot drunkenly just out of focus. A few memories stood out sharply, however-- like the first time he’d taken a Preludin. When he’d finally given in to the lads’ entreaties and taunts he’d charmed pills off of Mutti rather than take one from John, just to prove a point.   
  
The pill had been a real eye-opener. Literally. Fatigue had melted away and he’d drunk all the beer John had plied him with and kept going for hours, playing Stu’s hulking bass upside-down. And he’d sung and he’d run the set and even with his scraped, scabby chin he’d made it with that blonde waitress from the Roxana Club. Quite a night it had been.  
  
John had been thrilled until he wasn’t. Emotions had been running high at the time, and the details were blurry, but for whatever reason that night he’d run off to drown himself somewhere and ended up in a sorry pile with a busted leg on the stairs.   
  
John still had that injury. Paul still had the memory of John trying to kiss him for the first time. He’d been all tearful and slobbering drunk. _I’m crying, dun dun dun dun._  
  
‘Course, he’d improved since then. Off and on.  
  
They shared the last burning dregs of the weed, John pinching it in his fingernails, at one point holding it to Paul’s lips because Paul had no fingernails left to speak of.  
  
“Good grass. Bad joint,” John noted when the roach had at last disintegrated.  
  
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Paul answered through his nose, hoarding the last of the smoke in the back of his throat.  
  
“You just did, twat.”  
  
“Here, then,” Paul said and leaned forward, forming his lips into an O-shaped spout and exhaling gently, making like a steaming kettle with the flame turned off, sending the smoke wafting in the breeze to envelop John’s surprised face. John’s nostrils flared, an answering inhale. His gaze fell downwards to the smoke drifting from Paul’s lips.  
  
“Saved some for me,” he murmured.  
  
“Unh-huh.”  
  
“Hm.” John leaned further, so close only a ghost separated their pursed lips for a few very quiet seconds, then closed that hair’s breadth distance, tilting his head to make a seal against Paul’s mouth. Paul’s belly sparked quickly, hotly.  
  
Ah. John was in a better mood than he’d thought.  
  
That first, half-arsed kiss in Hamburg been a shocker. From one second to the next, months of accreted bohemian innuendo and his own misunderstood yearnings had coalesced into frighteningly sharp focus. _One in five males is homosexual_ , Royston had said. _Birds or blokes, it’s no big deal._ Paul had thought it a big deal, and it had frightened him on a level too deep to be named. He’d turned to stone like the mythological Greeks faced with Medusa’s severed head.   
  
Paul could barely remember what had happened after that. He’d maybe managed to get John up the stairs and into bed and … something? That girl had been there.  
  
They’d worked it out, eventually, of course. Off and on.  
  
Forgiveness gave their little make-out an ease of familiarity. What was surprising was how exposed they were out here – even hidden in the shadows, none of this sort of thing ever played out where anyone else could possibly see. Also unexpected was how desperately John clung to him, how the points of his fingers dug into Paul’s side, his hair. He tasted like the cheap rosé the hotel had presented them with at dinner. He pressed a thumb to the corner of Paul’s mouth.  
  
John had ended up pretty good at this business. _Better than kissing a girl?_ John had asked him once. _Nah, mate, just different,_ Paul had answered, adding _but still very good! Very good_ , at the look on John’s face.  
  
Better than very good. A little soul-firing, but he couldn’t tell John that. _Don’t get real on me, man._ Like he wouldn’t tell John how his song was running through his head, bomp bomp bomp bomp.   
  
It was very John, was what it was. Tender, yet with an edge of aggression that was, frankly, exciting. John could be the most infuriating pain in the arse, and yet also be the most brilliant being Paul had ever known. Even now Paul could feel himself leaning, seeking, pathetic. Like a flower turning because the sun had noticed it.   
  
Soon, despite the exposure, they were rather tangled up together, arms and breaths. John was hot and Paul was cold yet melting, flowing like ice cream on a summer sidewalk, mellow from the grass and a soupcon of burgeoning desire.  
  
He yelped when he felt beefy fingers squeezing his bottom.   
  
“Your arse is too bony,” John bitched against his lips.  
  
“Look who’s talking.” Paul could feel John’s ribs, for chrissake.  
  
John’s up-close and answering grin was delighted to hear it. He liked being skeletal because he’d never been so. Chubby schoolboy Paul could understand it, he supposed.  
  
John’s lips tilted. “Wanna go fool around?”  
  
That was John-speak for _not fucking per se_ , you know. Still.  
  
“Who, Mister Boneyparte?” Paul joked, equivocating.  
  
“Idiot.”  
  
Paul had things he should be doing. The plan for tomorrow’s shooting was hardly begun, let alone finalized, and…  
  
And really, there was no denying John. Physically, Paul was up for it, whatever _It_ turned out to be. Emotionally, John did not discern between preoccupation and rejection. His muscles tensed under Paul’s fingers.  
  
“Lead the way, mate,” Paul decided.  
  
John’s grin was wide, sunshine to light the chilly, trashy dark. He offered Paul’s arse one last prurient squeeze and they hooked elbows to face the furtive and awkward walk to somebody’s room.  
  
Paul didn’t really go for blokes. He just had this John thing, or they had this each-other thing, a strange little passion for each other that was both background and superseding, at the same time or different times, souls or bodies or both. Sometimes bonfires, sometimes currents under the surface of a cold river. Depending on what else was going on in their lives. Or who.  
  
There was Jane, and Maggie, and Cyn, and … none of them were here right now, were they? He and John always understood that this was where it began and ended. Y’know?  
  
Brian had used to look at Paul sometimes with a strange gaze, a smile so small Paul felt his heart might break if he tried to decipher it.   
  
And there he was again! Paul didn’t want to think about Brian. He wanted to have a laugh and get off. Get on.  
  
“Are you still seeing that bird. The odd Japanese one?” Paul ventured as he and John giggled and took turns tugging each other down a thankfully deserted service hallway.  
  
John snorted. “You mean Yoko? No.”  
  
“She wanted to photograph my bottom, you know.”  
  
“Why do you care about her, anyway?” John suddenly snipped.  
  
“Not me,” Paul soothed, waving his free hand in a _floating into the aether, forget it_ gesture. John could be stoned and horny and tetchy all at the same time-- that was nothing new. But honestly, John hadn’t been quite right since … well, since.   
  
Whatever the case, it was probably talk of women that’d set him off. The question begged: was it all women, or that particular woman? Paul wouldn’t bring either up again tonight, that was for sure. _Goo goo g’joob._  
  
They navigated their way to the outskirts of the lobby, sticking to the edges to avoid fans or reporters, and passed George doing the same thing going the other way. His eyes widened when he spotted them.  
  
“Hey,” he waved on his way past.  
  
Paul craned his neck to look back. “Hazza. How was your interview?”  
  
George swiveled and walked backwards a few steps. “Oh, it was all right. She— wait. What are you two—?” His heavy eyebrows sharpened into a scowl, and his tone shifted from drawl to dagger. “Oh fuck off, both of you.”  
  
John laughed, loud and cutting in return. “Night, George.”  
  
Paul wasn’t sorry to see George stomp away. George was his brother. Paul loved him. But if George thought acid and gurus paved a pathway to anywhere real, he had a fatal misunderstanding of John’s needs. And if George had thought he could replace Paul, then John had misled him. He wouldn’t have been the first such victim.  
  
Unspokenly he and John tugged each other closer until they were bumping shoulders as they walked. The grass had been very good. Very good. By the time they faced the choice of lift or stairs, Paul was rubber-kneed and warm-bellied, anticipatory.  
  
Lift it was, _bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp,_ and they ended up in John’s suite. In their short time at the Atlantic he’d made the room his own, infused it with his scent in the smoke-strewn clothing, with his character in the piled magazines and books from Mad to Melville. None of it mattered, really, as Paul kicked the door shut and they sort of collided and stayed put, snogging with their forearms hanging over each other’s shoulders.  
  
Having the decision made must have given John patience; he’d always loved a bit of romance as the means and not just to an end. Being cooked let Paul ride along, willing to be romanced, just a little slow, slick wordless discussion, smoke and stubble-tinged. After a few minutes John’s glasses slid inexorably down his sweaty face and added a note of nose-skewering comedy to the proceedings.  
  
Paul, who’d always admonished John to _put yer fucking glasses on you tit_ , plucked the flimsy frames from John’s nose and made sure they had safe refuge on the bedside table.  
  
“So precise, Napoleon,” John narked.  
  
“Fuck off, yeah?” Paul teased in return.   
  
It was amazing how _John_ John looked without the round wire glasses. He could almost have been John in LA. John at the Beverly Hills house, before their last show-- _last one ever_ \-- where John’s covert gaze from under a heavy fringe had followed Paul as he made a fool of himself at billiards, and as he emerged wet and photogenic from the pool. Where Paul had wondered if he’d misunderstood the signals he’d read backstage and in the van and on the plane. He’d discovered later, wedged onto the cool tile of the poolhouse floor with John’s hot hands gripping his thighs, that he hadn’t.   
  
They’d tried to go their own ways for a bit, but that hadn’t lasted. They’d come back. They’d forgiven each other too many sins, patched each other with too many pieces of their own souls to do otherwise.  
  
Paul kissed his way down John’s shiny nose, around the outline of his smile.   
  
“It’s like the second time,” John murmured.  
  
Paul knew what that meant. But John was wrong. “No, at least the third.”  
  
“Ah, so it is.”  
  
John seemed to be growing his sideboards out. Paul ran his thumbs over the fuzz, framing John’s cheeks with his fingers, his heart thumping like a bassline. _You’ve been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long, bomp, bomp._ Paul remembered the third time. John as a bohemian, black-turtlenecked and corduroy-jacketed and impossibly brilliant and cool. More than just a bloke.  
  
A little more heat punched its way into Paul’s next kiss, and before long he was mostly hard and a little questy, clutching John tight and swaying their hips together, moving to the song in his head, strumming through his body, John’s song of grief and nonsense, paced like a long, laconic acid fuck. Was it a fuck or a fuck you? Didn’t matter, just playing it was hot, and they could just get off right here, couldn’t they?  
  
John pulled back suddenly and stared at him. “Jesus, Paul. Are you in a hurry?”  
  
“No! I was just…” _Just getting into it. But don’t get real on me, man_. He tried to hide a deep, shaky breath. “I was – guess it’s been a little while, ha ha.”  
  
John scowled. “What? Did you get discovered and now dearest Lady Jane won’t put out?”  
  
Paul scowled back. There were lots of things he could say, like _discover what?_ Or even, _it was you, your song, I was grooving to._ “No, she’s working,” he said at last.  
  
And why was John going on about Jane again? Paul knew with absolute certainty where Jane stood on the subject of John. But he was never quite sure of the opposite. He only knew that after John had returned from Spain, he’d defiantly stayed at Paul’s house practically the whole time Jane was gone, attached himself to Paul even when other girls or other friends were there. Or weren’t. No recriminations! It had all been so easy. But when Jane came back, John had just as defiantly stayed away and become a stranger for nigh on a fortnight.  
  
Paul had thought, _oh no, we’re not doing this again_. George had said it was punishment for missing Brian’s party, which was bollocks.   
  
John had been happy enough in Greece, with all of them. Smiling and more than relaxed. In Wales, too, until. Until.  
  
“Where is it you go, Paul?” John asked in a quiet voice.  
  
His gaze was intent, and Paul matched it. “Nowhere. I’m not anywhere but here.” _It’s your song, you soft fuck._  
  
Maybe his unspoken words were read in his eyes. Maybe not. Either way, John unpursed his lips. His fingers twiddled with the belt loops of Paul’s trousers, light, shiver-inducing caresses of the skin under the edge of his vest.   
  
“Now’s the now, eh?” John said, conciliatory.  
  
“This very moment.”  
  
There was obviously some emotional turmoil in the now that Paul wasn’t reading. What he was sure of was that they were both here, and they were both seeking intimacy. Paul wanted John to feel happy, content, he really did. He wanted to help. He wanted to make this movie. He didn’t want the music to stop. He pushed John back with a palm against his white-turtlenecked breastbone.   
  
“Sit down on the bed, Johnny. Let me take a turn, eh?”  
  
The hitch in John’s breathing betrayed his deep approval. This wasn’t something Paul did often, and only with John. For John.  
  
Getting on his knees always felt a little strange, though Paul supposed it shouldn’t, given that he’d drop to the carpet quickly enough to get his nose up a pussy. And if John got any extra satisfaction off of seeing Paul give that kind of obeisance, well, then, fook right off, Lennon.   
  
He’d been there himself. And there was a first time Paul could remember vividly.  
  
John’s jeans were loose but his pecker was hard. _You’ve been a naughty boy, you let your knickers down._ Paul’s heart drummed between his ears, echoed like reverb in his belly as he licked a slow finger and pulled back the foreskin on John’s cock. Sympathetic arousal throbbed in his trousers. He’d hardly believed it himself, when John had suddenly been there between his legs, backstage somewhere up north, hot mouth on his cock and strong fingers wrapped around his balls.  
  
He risked a glance up to see John slouched on elbows and looking back down at him, eyes unfocused and shining. A Maharishi-grade grin was pasted on his face. The bastard.  
  
“Oh, forgive me, Lord Jesus,” Paul drawled, adding a Tennessee twang for extra piss-taking.   
  
“We can still barrelhouse baby, on the riverside.”  
  
_You can squeeze my lemon ‘til the juice run down my leg._ Paul snorted. Indeed, what good, old-fashioned southern Baptists they could never be. The firecrackers would have been bombs, if only those fine people had known the extent of Beatle depravity. _Moptops Gobble Cock_ , the headlines screamed!  
  
Paul licked his lips for extra lasciviousness before putting his mouth where his money was, swallowing the soap-and-sweat scent from someone who’d take a long bath on a busy day. It was easy, easy-breezy, just do it like you’d want it done, one hand to keep John’s hips pinned to the bed, one to stroke the base where his mouth couldn’t reach.  
  
Dimly he felt the shudder of John’s thighs, heard the low moans of _Paul, fuck, Paul,_ dribbling from this throat. Paul let his back arch and his belly sink towards his knees; the rhythm was him, and John was his, _I am he as you are me_. John had let him fuck his mouth.  
  
Miles had published an article in IT once about the stars and spiritual chakras and the transference of erotic energies at sexual pinnacle, and it was all very mystical twaddle, but the vibe between himself and John was undeniable. It always had been. Paul’s tongue was slow, as slow as John’s fingertips tracing ley lines on his scalp, and Paul was so hard it hurt.  
  
“Your hair,” John murmured.   
  
“Mmm?” Paul hummed back.  
  
“I hate your hair.”  
  
“Fuck off,” Paul managed as well as he could with a mouth full of cock.  
  
But John was speaking around him, as if in a dream. “Good ol’ Paulie. A pixie. A star-traveller. It’s ungodly. Unutterable. Oh fuck. Oh, god.”  
**  
** John’s fingers tightened in Paul’s hair and he came in Paul’s mouth, quiver-hipped and salty. Supposedly it was a positive transference of affection given, but Paul didn’t want to swallow it, thanks.  
  
He peeled himself from the floor and greeted John with a spunk-filled mouth. A few hot, hopeful minutes passed, with John receptive but boneless. Eventually Paul pulled back to brush sticky fingers over John’s screwed-shut eyelids.  
  
“You’re welcome,” he murmured.  
**  
** In return John offered a half-laugh that sounded suspiciously like a sob. _Oh, hell._  
  
John could be predictable sometimes. Like, he’d never be anywhere as early as you wanted him to be. He never met a cat he didn’t want to stroke. But you could never be sure what might happen when he got off. He might want a ciggie and a chat. He might want to go again. Or he might have an existential crisis.  
  
Given John’s general mental state lately, Paul might have known what he was in for.  
  
Perhaps they could head it off? Paul eased up and patted the bed beside John’s head. “You’re not falling asleep on me here, are you, Johnny? I mean, it’s been a long day, but hello here, you still have some work--”  
  
John interrupted him by sitting up. His eyes snapped open. “Paul,” he said with some urgency.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Paul.” Now John’s eyes were suspiciously shiny. Oh, lord, his cheeks were wet. It was worse than Paul had feared. But even he couldn’t maintain an erection in the face of pain brought to tears, or the empathic squeeze of his heart in his own chest. He took a deep breath.  
  
“What is it?” he asked in a voice soft as calf leather. He’d no idea what to expect.  
  
John peered at him, intent, trying to focus through myopia and tears.   
  
“I want to leave Cyn.”  
  
“What?”   
  
“I – I th-think it’s over.”  
  
“It’s not.” Paul had never envisaged that level of crisis.  
  
“But it is.”  
  
Paul was so bewildered he grabbed John’s hand and held on, hard. John was trembling, as if overtaken by the fear of losing his marriage. “That’s not true! Cyn loves you. She lives for you.”  
  
“I don’t care.”  
  
“You love Cyn. You’re just … going through a tough time. What with Brian dying and--”  
  
“Brian, oh God.”  
  
_Bam!_ And damn. Tightness pricked Paul’s eyelids. He should never have mentioned Brian, not here, not now. Paul squeezed John’s hand again, harder. He couldn’t have John going off the deep end. Not here, not now. “Let’s get through this week, it’ll be better, you’ll see, you’ll feel better--”  
  
“You don’t want me to leave her.”  
  
“Of-- of course not.” John without Cynthia was like … a hot-air balloon with only one tether. You needed at least two.  
  
Inside John, some idea died unspoken. Paul could only watch as the cold river swelled up, overtaking John from pursed lips to shuttered gaze, and he’d absolutely no idea how it’d happened. Again.   
  
John tugged his hand away. He laughed, short and bitter.  
  
“I ask you again, Paul: where do you go?”  
  
Paul was off-balance, unrequited and still swimming through the swamp of a sex-and-weed high, _oh lord, oh shit, what in hells bells have I done this time?_  
  
“I—I haven’t gone anywhere,” he managed. _Where have_ you _gone?_ was the question he should ask. He wanted to. What he didn’t want was the answer, because they had music to make, they had to keep moving, see? Together. “Listen. I know you’ve been bothered lately. I mean, one only has to look at the lyrics--”  
  
“Maybe you should go. I’m shit right now,” John said. The words were self-directed, but his gaze held a vague accusation. _See how they’re snide._  
  
“Fine, fine.” Paul jumped to his feet and crossed his arms for emotional protection. He still had the taste of John’s come on his lips. He’d done nothing but give, as usual, and had only gotten grief, and only apparently because he wasn’t a mind-reader. Just because you loved a pain in the arse didn’t make them any less so, you know?  
  
John waved an indifferent hand. “Never mind. I’ll change my mind tomorrow. Good night, Paul.”  
  
That was Paul’s chance to escape, and he made it to the door and even managed to open it. But love—worry-- something turned him back and held him there for a few moments. John had flopped back onto the bed, a forlorn pain in the arse with his jeans around his knees.  
  
“C-call her tomorrow. It’ll be okay, you’ll see. Get some sleep. And, er.”  
  
John was silent, waiting.  
  
“Thanks for doing the Nat Jackley bits. Won’t you like to have your name as director in the credits?”  
  
John groaned and rolled over. Paul shut the door and put his hands in his pockets, and after a quick visual check of the empty hallway, walked back to his room thinking of things he didn’t understand. Like celestial energies, a universe of stars that were always in motion, unheeding of Earthly troubles. John. He thought again about Brian’s sad smile, and realized he’d never know the meaning of it.  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for waiting such a long time for chapter 4. I hope it was worth the wait. It was a really hard chapter to write, to get the interactions and characterizations just how I wanted them and blah blah blah. Checkeredcloth, you rule. Please comment. I love feedback!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Beta and much encouragement from checkeredcloth - thanks SO MUCH. 
> 
> All comments, concrit, everything, accepted and adored.


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